---
title: "Rails 6.1 adds invert_where method"
description: "Rails 6.1 adds invert_where method"
canonical_url: "https://www.bigbinary.com/blog/rails-6-1-adds-invert_where"
markdown_url: "https://www.bigbinary.com/blog/rails-6-1-adds-invert_where.md"
---

# Rails 6.1 adds invert_where method

Rails 6.1 adds invert_where method

- Author: Chimed Palden
- Published: May 4, 2021
- Categories: Rails, Rails 6.1

Rails 6.1 adds an `invert_where` method that will invert all scope conditions.

Let's see an example.

```ruby
class User
  scope :active, -> { where(accepted: true, locked: false) }
end

>> User.all
=> #<ActiveRecord::Relation [
#<User id: 1, name: 'Rob', accepted: true, locked: true>
#<User id: 2, name: 'Jack', accepted: false, locked: false>
#<User id: 3, name: 'Nina', accepted: true, locked: false>
#<User id: 4, name: 'Oliver', accepted: false, locked: true>
```

Now let's query for active and inactive users

```ruby
>> User.active
# SELECT * FROM Users WHERE `accepted` = 1 AND `locked` = 0
=> #<ActiveRecord::Relation [
#<User id: 3, name: 'Nina', accepted: true, locked: false>]>

>> User.active.invert_where
# SELECT * FROM Users WHERE NOT (`accepted` = 1 AND `locked` = 0)
=> #<ActiveRecord::Relation [
#<User id: 1, name: 'Rob', accepted: true, locked: true>
#<User id: 2, name: 'Jack', accepted: false, locked: false>
#<User id: 4, name: 'Oliver', accepted: false, locked: true>]>
```

As we can see above, if we use `invert_where` with multiple attributes, it
applies logical `NOR`, which is `NOT a OR NOT b`, to the WHERE clause of the
query. Using DeMorgan's Law, it can also be written as `NOT (a AND b)` to match
the second output.

Check out the [pull request](https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/40249) for more
details.

## Links

- [Human page](https://www.bigbinary.com/blog/rails-6-1-adds-invert_where)